Academic Support Coordinator Jennifer Kramer leads students in an exercise to reduce stress. Kramer and Annie Egan, K-12 Director of Student Support, presented on mental and physical wellness and offered multiple tactics to control anxiety.

Kira Daley

Kira Daley

Academic Support Coordinator Jennifer Kramer leads students in an exercise to reduce stress. Kramer and Annie Egan, K-12 Director of Student Support, presented on mental and physical wellness and offered multiple tactics to control anxiety.

While class workloads and extracurricular demands increase, faculty members from the student support team led the community in the first of a series of wellness assemblies this morning.

“We decided as a school last spring that wellness was a topic that was important enough to build in time for, as opposed to inserting randomly where we could,” Annie Egan, K-12 Director of Student Support, said. “If we are spending so much energy talking about tests, papers, reading or writing, not spending energy on wellness would really be a hole and a gap in terms of how we are able to prepare students for the world.”

As the first of many, the assembly was a broad overview of mental and physical wellness, according to Egan.

“I think talking about wellness is really necessary at this time of our lives” senior Grace Boudreau said. “Most of us teenage students have a lot going on, and our busy lives often cause us to forget to take care of ourselves.”

Academic Support Coordinator Jennifer Kramer led students in breathing and body exercises to reduce daily anxiety and promote an overall healthier lifestyle.

“I liked the part when [Kramer] taught us exercises about how to cope with stress,” freshman Adele Fratesi said. “It made the assembly more interactive and interesting.”

It is necessary for communities to create time for self-health conversations, especially due to the many transitions teenagers experience during high school, according to Bourdeau.

“I think having this time and space to talk about and remind ourselves about our own wellness is very important,” Boudreau said. “I’m proud to be in a community that emphasizes student-support and well-being.”

Future assemblies will be led by visiting speakers, students or members of the support team, according to Egan.

“Wellness is something you need to learn and tend to. It doesn’t just happen, it’s not intuitive, it’s actually often counter intuitive” Egan said. “It is part of our curriculum in terms of how we educate people to be healthy adults and how to give back in the world.”